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Full Details

Surname
ONAARMINAS
Forename
Annie
Day
07
Month
06
Year
1924
Age
16
Occupation
Message Girl
Mine/Quarry Name
Dixon's, No.6 Pit
Mineral Worked
Coal
Owner
William Dixon Ltd
Location
Carfin
County
Lanarkshire
Details of Event
7 June 1924: Run Down By Pit “Pug” – Sad Fate of Carfin Girl - A young Polish girl, 16 years of age, employed as a message girl at No.6 Dixon’s Pits, Carfin, met with terrible injuries through being run down by a pug engine in the vicinity of the pit on Thursday afternoon, one leg being severed at the knee and the other requiring to be amputated on the unfortunate girl’s arrival at the Royal Infirmary, where she had been removed. The girl succumbed in the Infirmary early on Saturday morning. Named Annie Onaarminas, and residing with her widowed mother at 2 brushers Row, Carfin, Annie was the youngest girl employed at the pithead and her bright, cheery personality made her a general favourite. It appears that at the moment of the dreadful accident; Annie had been sent a message to bring picks to the pithead and when crossing the rails near the pithead, on her return journey, she failed to observe the approaching pug. A Warning unheard - A watcher at the pithead is said to have observed the girl’s danger and to have shouted to her to "mind the pug," but with the noise made by the machinery of the coal screes the girl didn't hear the warning and clearing a line of waggons she stepped right on to the rails in front of the pug. The pug driver hadn’t noticed the girl crossing the rails till the pug was actually on her, when it was too late, and the girl was run down. The helpers who hurried quickly to the scene were horrified to find one of the legs had been severed while the other was hanging to the body by little more than the skin. With all haste, Dr. Irving was summoned and he attended to the girl’s injuries and ordered her removal to the Infirmary. Her condition was critical from the first and there was little hope of her recovery- so terrible the nature of her injuries and the consequent lose of blood. The girl's mother was called in on Friday, when the little victim was able to tell her own story of the dreadful occurrence. Interviewed by a Motherwell "Times” representative, Mrs Onaarminas, in her own home at Carfin awaiting the arrival of the body from the Infirmary, was too overwhelmed with grief to say much. She related however, that Annie in her last few hours of consciousness, didn’t mind the loss of her legs, if only she was able to be home, and get out in a chair and go about and see her friends. “She loved her home and the friends," said the bereaved mother through her tears, "and she couldn‘t think to be parted from them." The girl’s father, a Lithuanian, who served at the Russian front, was killed in the late war [Motherwell Times 13 June 1924]